University of Colorado junior Srinidhi Radhakrishnan gives a thumbs-up to the crowd after receiving a $10,000 scholarship presented by retired astronaut Vance Brand in the lobby of Andrews Hall on Friday.
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JEREMY PAPASSO
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Retired astronaut Vance Brand addressed a crowd of University of Colorado students Friday, revealing to them that American astronauts socialized with the Soviet cosmonauts prior to the historic meeting in space on the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project Mission.

"The pictures show us meeting up in space," Brand said. "But the secret is we had actually met many times before, and we knew each other very well. I had four trips to the Soviet Union for training, and on these trips we had meals with the cosmonauts, met their families and went on tourist-type ventures."

Overseas, the American astronauts went to museums and the ballet. When the cosmonauts came to the United States, Brand said, the Americans took them to Disneyland and a Texas ranch.

Brand's visit to CU was part of an event in which student Srinidhi Radhakrishnan was presented with a $10,000 scholarship from the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation.

During the presentation in the lobby of Andrews Hall -- the home of the Engineering Honors Program -- Brand shared his experiences from the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project and three space shuttle missions with a crowd of mostly students.

Brand graduated from Longmont High School and earned his bachelor's degrees in business and aeronautical engineering from CU. He retired from NASA 4 1/2 years ago.

"I have four space missions and 12 grandchildren," he told the audience in a humble introduction before he took questions.

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During his talk, he said that with the end of NASA's shuttle program, Earth orbit is ripe for commercialization, and he's curious to see how NASA will be involved in crew selection.

Asked his thoughts on extraterrestrial life, Brand replied: "I've never seen any. I've talked to some astronauts who claim they've seen things they can't explain, but nobody has said it's a little green guy."

The Astronaut Scholarship is the largest monetary award given in the United States to undergraduate students in science, technology, engineering and math and that is based solely on merit.

The recipient, Radhakrishnan, is a junior majoring in chemical and biological engineering. She participates in two research groups: one that centers on the synthesis of hydrogel nanoparticles; and one that focuses on modeling the physical and mechanical properties of the eye. She wants to become a doctor and is interested in tissue engineering.

Radhakrishnan volunteers her time to the CU student chapter of Engineers Without Borders and writes for Colorado Engineer Magazine. She also has experience working in an orphanage in India and at a local homeless shelter.

About 200 of her peers were at the event Friday, many of whom are part of the Engineering Honors Program.

Mounted from the ceiling in the Andrews Hall lobby is a sophisticated model of the solar system that students made from scratch.

Scot Douglas, a CU honors professor, said the students in Andrews Hall "care about each other and hope for each other."

"One of the things that we're committed to here is being deeply ambitious without being competitive," he said.

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